Bob's Burgers

This keyboard right here is the Casio SK-5.

Ok I guess technically it's the Realistic Concertmate 650, but other than a bit of RadioShack branding on the silkscreen it's a Casio SK-5.

At its core it's a basic kid's toy keyboard, a rompler that plays back some pretty crusty 8-bit instrument samples (one of which is a dog bark). But like the SK-1, it also includes some RAM that you can record your own short samples onto; either 4 samples at 0.7 seconds each, or 2 samples at 1.4 seconds (or, if you like, one 1.4 second sample and a pair of 0.7 second samples). These samples can then be played back chromatically on the keyboard like the built-in samples, and you can additionally apply an envelope, play them backwards, or set them to loop or one-shot play. You can also trigger them individually by using the 4 yellow-orange pads on the right. The pads on the left are dedicated to a high and low bongo, a lion roar, and a laser gun sound effect that are all baked into the ROM.

Because sure, why not.

While the SK-1 carves out its niche as the first affordable home sampling keyboard, the SK-5 has found its place in pop culture as the keyboard used by Gene Belcher in the tv show Bob's Burgers for doing things like playing fart sounds. As one does.

Anyway, this keyboard usually sells for around $125 to $250 depending on the condition. Because this one had a "for parts or repair" discount I got it for $45. The seller claimed that it was stone cold dead, and would not turn on.

Well, I plugged the power in and it fired right up and worked perfectly.

But that got me to thinking: they probably didn't have the correct power adapter for this keyboard (as none was included) and so they most likely tried to run it from 5 AA batteries. So I stuck 5 AA batteries in it, and wouldn't you know, it was dead indeed.

So I now had two reasons to open up the keyboard. 1: It desperately needed cleaning, and 2: I'd need to investigate the battery compartment for alkaline schmoo.

And when I say it needed cleaning...

It.

Needed.

Cleaning.

Anyway, let's have a look at that battery compartment. The section near the battery door looked fine, but it's got one of those tiny doors where you just slide the batteries in one at a time, so I couldn't see how the other end looked until I took it apart.

The verdict?

Alkaline schmoo, though not too much of it. Plenty of dust and dead bugs too.

And speaking of dust, these PCB switches had picked up a bit of grime over the years.

And the contacts that wipe across them were a tiny bit tarnished.

They're not supposed to be black and sooty, they're supposed to be shiny and silver. Like this.

Anyway, I scooped all the guts out, so the keyboard is almost disassembled enough to clean.

The cardboard on the bottom is glued in place so I'll just have to work around that, but importantly the keys really need to come out so I can clean around that area. To do so, I'll need to pry back the locking tabs on this plastic cover.

And then once it's popped free, the screws holding the keys in place can be removed.

And now I can clean all sides of the keys, because they very much need cleaning on all sides.

And I can clean the case under the keys, for the same reason.

Naturally I'll also be cleaning the buttons. Because yikes.

So into the sink it goes, with a bit of dish soap and borax to clean all the human schmoo off of it.

Scrub-a-dub-dub.

Naturally the battery contact got some special attention with some white vinegar.

Then everything got rinsed and dried off.

And I'm sure you'll be tickled to know that the keyboard now works on battery power.

And I can actually touch it without getting 17 diseases, 8 of which were formerly unknown to mankind.

The Weird One

The 80s were a hell of a decade, and right in the middle Boss came out with their micro-rack series. Most of the effects were pretty standard: reverbs, delays, compressors, phasers, flangers etc. But when it came to the delay effects (and there were multiple of them), they went a little bit wild. The most peculiar of the bunch was definitely the Boss RSD-10 sampler delay, which incorporated some features of a delay and some features of a sampler.

Naturally I wanted to play with one myself, and so...

Now as luck would have it, this is actually the second RSD-10 I bought. I had originally found a unit in good condition selling out of Italy for a pretty reasonable price, even factoring the shipping. I figured I likely wouldn't see one come up again any time soon, so I jumped on it. Wouldn't you know it, but a few days later one showed up in the US as broken for half the price. Due to the shipping time, the broken one actually showed up first, and I already had it fixed by the time that the good one arrived.

I'm not entirely sure what I'll do with two of them, but I suppose I'll figure something out.

I'm A Model, You Know What I Mean

This slab of silver is the Korg Z1. It's a physical modelling synthesizer that attempts (with a reasonable amount of success) to reproduce the sounds of acoustic instruments by, as the name suggests, modelling the physics of how they produce sound.

Despite being a late 1990s digital synth, the demand for this beast is still quite strong and they generally go for anywhere from $500 to $1000. Naturally I didn't pay $500 to $1000 for mine. Instead I only paid about $230. Well, ¥35,000 to be exact. Plus about $300 shipping to get it here from Japan.

Now you might say that this adds up to between $500 and $1000, but keep in mind that it costs about $250 to ship something like this across the US too, so I still came out well ahead.

How did I manage to score this discount, you ask? Well the auction listing clearly stated that two of the keys were stuck down. In fact, here's the photo from the auction:

I wonder what could cause that?

A mystery to be sure.

That doesn't mean that I'm home free in terms of repairs, though. This is still a mid-90s digital synth, which means we'll need to inspect it for capacitor and battery leakage before squirting a bunch of angry electrons into it.

The auction listing says it spent 20 years sitting in a closet, and yeah, that looks about right. The capacitors are all pristine. But how about that battery?

No leakage at least, but are there any electrons left inside?

Hmm, I'm gonna call this a "no".

Since this battery is soldered in, I'll need access to the back of the PCB, so out comes a few more screws.

Then I slurp the solder out and the battery comes free nice and easy. Time to give it the send-off it deserves.

Since I don't feel like keeping a supply of solder-tab batteries around, and since I don't like soldering batteries, I'll be installing a battery holder instead.

This style with the wires is really nice because you can install it in any PCB regardless of what footprint the battery uses. As long as the wires reach, you can just go ahead and solder it in. Like this.

And then a little square of velcro keeps it from rattling around loose.

So now we have a healthy 3.3v to keep the preset RAM saved when the synth is powered off.

So the board goes back in place.

And it's time for the moment of truth.

Well I guess Korg doesn't know how to spell "zed" but I'll give them a pass. Just this once.

Very Effective

So I'd like to make a blog post about how I purchased a Boss RE-50 half-rack effects unit for the low-low price of "for parts or repair" and then brought it back to life through a careful application of my skill and ingenuity.

I'd like to make that post, but I can't. This is because the Boss RE-50 half-rack effects unit that I purchased for the low-low price of "for parts or repair" wasn't actually broken at all. It was filthy, so I cleaned it up, but so far as I can tell it's working just fine.

It did need a new RAM battery installed (which was, conveniently, socketed rather than soldered down) and I still need to get the correct 12VAC power supply for it, but I was able to power it up by injecting some voltage directly into the regulator and it worked just fine. I even traced the power right back to the input jack and nothing at all was amiss.

It's days like this that I wonder what's become of humanity. It used to be you could trust a random eBay seller to deliver on their promise of sending you a non-working device. Who knew that they'd play the ole switcheroo and send me a working one instead? So disappointing.

The Great Fluffening Part 10

When we last left off, I had just upgraded my tool arsenal with some foam cutting jigsaw blades. I'm happy to report that these have been working remarkably well. So well, in fact, that I've managed to finally get all of the insulation panels installed.

This was also helped a great deal by the T-square that I finally got around to purchasing.

I really should have got this from the start, but live and learn I guess.

Speaking of learning things, I learned that my head gets really sweaty when I'm at the top of a ladder. I think it must be because I'm afraid of heights, since there's simply no other logical explanation for it.

But I managed to persevere, and, as I mentioned above, the insulation panels are all in place. Let's take a moment to bask in their insulating glory.

The moment of basking is over, work will resume immediately.

Specifically, the work of putting up the strapping. At some point in the far distant future I expect this strapping will be holding up some drywall, but in the more immediate present it's going to keep the insulation panels from falling out, since a few of them aren't an especially snug fit and the tape won't hold them forever.

First up, the diagonals along the valley.

Followed by filling in across the joists.

The pneumatic nail gun is really pulling its weight here.

Continuing across the top, it's more of the same, though on a 19.2 center instead of the 16 inch centers, because this section of ceiling happened to be about 40 inches across so it divided more evenly that way.

If you recognize this strapping from a few years ago, you've got a good eye. It's actually the strapping that used to be (barely) holding up the vinyl siding that used to be on the front of my house. Naturally I wouldn't throw away some perfectly good crappy wood, and that decision paid off handsomely today.

Of course there isn't nearly enough of it to do the whole ceiling so I'll need to get about 30 more boards to wrap things up, give or take, but I at least had enough to get things started.

Synth Dentistry

Since I had my MG-1 out recently it reminded me that I never went through and freshened up the keys. They uh... they needed it.

Step 1 is 1000 grit wet sanding to knock down any raised burrs and scuff out any light scratches. It's not going to get down to the deep scratches but that's not really the point.

And while we're at it, I'll toss them into a bucket of borax to clean off all the hand cheese.

Round 2 is 2000 grit wet sanding. This evens out the scratches from the 1000 grit and gets the surface ready for buffing.

And then, of course, the buffing.

This electric buffer has been a fantastic investment.

So there's a few deep scratches left, but they're very difficult to actually feel and you don't notice them much through the shine unless you're getting up close and looking for them.

It's safe to say that both the look and feel of this keyboard have been hugely improved by this procedure.